Starter quiz
- Which of the following sentences uses a conversational tone?
- However, there were few choices available to me.
- But I didn't have much choice. ✓
- I wanted to do it, but I was not able to.
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- Which of these features is not used to build a conversational tone?
- verbless sentence
- semi-colon ✓
- exclamative
- rhetorical question
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- Which of the below are verbless sentences?
- What a mess this place is in!
- What a mess! ✓
- Every door was slammed in our faces.
- Every single door. ✓
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- Which of the sentences below use conversational sentence openers?
- But here I am, exploring the world. ✓
- I always wanted to, but it seemed impossible.
- The weeks were full of cleaning and packing.
- And that was that. ✓
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- Which sentence has the colon in the correct position?
- I couldn't believe my luck: I was going to the mother country at last! ✓
- I couldn't believe my luck I was going: to the mother country at last!
- I couldn't believe: my luck I was going to the mother country at last!
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- Which word is not an appropriate one to describe Celia's feelings as the Windrush leaves Bermuda?
- optimistic
- deflated ✓
- confident
- excited
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Exit quiz
- Which sentence below has a conversational tone?
- That's right - I said above! ✓
- Trains are running above my head.
- There are numerous trains above my head.
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- Match the features of a conversational tone to the examples.
- exclamative⇔How strange! ✓
- rhetorical question⇔What would my mother say? ✓
- verbless sentence⇔An absolute mess. ✓
- conversational sentence opener⇔But here I am. ✓
- Which verbless sentence could follow this sentence for effect? 'Every door was slammed in our faces.'
- Most of the people didn't even look at us.
- Every single one. ✓
- Every one, that is, except the last one.
- It was so deflating.
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- Which sentence with a conversational opener could follow this one? 'The government has placed us in an underground shelter in Clapham.'
- Because of this, I am here, sitting on a hard bunk.
- Consequently, I am here, sitting on a hard bunk.
- So here I am, sitting on a hard bunk. ✓
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- Which cohesive devices have been used in this sentence? 'As the ship neared Tilbury, we all rushed around in panic: we wanted to look our very best.'
- adverbial complex sentence ✓
- colon to introduce a list
- colon to explain ✓
- relative complex sentence
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- Which word best describes Celia's feelings at the end of the diary?
- deflated
- tenacious ✓
- apprehensive
- downhearted
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Worksheet
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Presentation
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Lesson Details
Key learning points
- Writing is most successful when we orally rehearse before writing.
- A diary can include events and feelings written in the past and present tense.
- We use a range of cohesive devices in all writing, including different punctuation, sentence types and parenthesis.
- Because a diary is a personal piece of writing, it can have a conversational tone.
- We can create a conversational tone using questions, exclamatives, verbless sentences and conversational openers.
Common misconception
Pupils may think that every single verb in a past or present tense paragraph has to stick to that tense.
We're writing from a present or a past tense perspective, but the way that language works means that not every verb will be in the same tense in a paragraph. Encourage the children to think about what 'sounds right' and to orally rehearse sentences.
Keywords
Conversational tone - the effect created by using language features such as conversational sentence openers that may break normal ‘rules’ of writing
Cohesive devices - language structures that develop text cohesion
Orally rehearse - when we say aloud the sentences we want to write before we write them
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